


before

by Kaiseriin



Series: home with you [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: And angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluffy, Pseudo-Incest, big fluff, it's back baby, oh the angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26338384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiseriin/pseuds/Kaiseriin
Summary: "We carved our names into the stone of a crumbling arch and then sat in the dust and rubble of the world to finish our promise: whoever makes it out on the other side fixes everything - and, well, whoever doesn't waits with Delores." ◂ [FivexOC] ▸
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: home with you [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913896
Comments: 14
Kudos: 56





	1. monday

**Author's Note:**

> hello everybody. yes, you read my username and title and synopsis correctly - it's really me! i'm back and ready to explain myself!! this will be a long note so if you wish to skip and just continue with the story, i will only say that i hope you enjoy it (whether for the first time or as a re-read) and know that it will not be deleted because i don't have the heart to do that again. i missed you guys and writing too much. i'm as soft as diego.
> 
> i want to first reach out to Child_of_the_TARDIS. can you imagine my total shock when mindlessly scrolling through UA stories on here (looking for anything about the swedes bc i love them) and i saw my own username and title in your story/letter? to say that my heart did a little jump is an understatement, i thought i had misread it! but then i clicked and of course i was stunned. i read not only your letter but comments and responses and i just realised how much of a mistake i made. i knew that people liked my stories, i wasn't blind. but i was in my own head (which remains my biggest and worst flaw and i'm working on it). i am someone who wants things to be perfect. i think it reflects in my writing which some can consider a bit flowery and poetic - it's because i will sit and think about the perfect word and not use any other until i think it flows the way i want it. 
> 
> i'm an overthinker and i get overwhelmed sometimes. i got one or two negative PMs on my other account (zed minsky for those who saw this story on FF too) and i started to wonder if my story really was sick for its pairing or if i had been wrong to write it in the first place. i got into a bad place of doubt and then mounting responsibilities in my real life made me feel a bit rushed and panicked. but i've realised that i was rash and made a mistake. as Child_of_the_TARDIS pointed out, everyone is entitled to their opinion. i cannot ask for feedback on any site and then not like what i'm told. that's irrational and unfair. 
> 
> so i'm reposting my stories. i'm gonna alter the ending of during juuust slightly bc i had some ideas for 'after' that i would like to change and i'm not gonna make the same mistake twice of rushing to get a chapter out. i hope you guys can understand if it takes me more than a week or two to post. i'm working on that perfectionist attitude but it still bites me in the arse every now and then and i'm really trying because i love this show. i love that you guys love it and that we can all share in that.
> 
> Child_of_the_TARDIS, on the chance that you see my comment left for you and see this, too, you got to tell me how much you loved my story and i’m now getting the chance to tell you how grateful i am for that love. thank you. 
> 
> to all those who originally commented and left feedback and kudos etc, i am so sorry that i let myself get wrapped up in my own head and i hope you can all forgive me for being 10x more of a drama queen than klaus!! if this is your first time clicking on this story and you have no idea what i'm rambling about please ignore me i'm in my feelings - i'm that girl at the end of mean girls wishing that i could bake a cake made out of rainbows and we could all eat it together and says she has a lot of feelings... lol
> 
> so, i'm back and a lot better off in my mind than i was a few days ago. i think if my story can offer any bit of light in times like this then i will keep it up for that purpose and keep going with it. i've already had some ideas of where to go with 'after' and i'm looking forward to writing it. 
> 
> thank you guys for the encouragement. i don't have any other lofty way to put it than that: thank you thank you thank you. 
> 
> all the best, stay safe,  
> \- kaiseriin (or zed minsky i guess) (also there was a considerate comment on Child_of_the_TARDIS' own story/letter which really politely stayed neutral with pronouns - not to worry, i'm she/her. despite this long-winded note, i dont write personal stuff on my own accounts and so you could never have known!)

# ☂

Number 8

“number eight”

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

_two years **before**_

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

_Beneath the soft yellow of the lampshade, the small pieces which would compose the pocket-watch shone and dulled between the forceps that held them. Scattered on his leathered desk-pad were pencilled sketches with wheels and hairsprings marked and numbered. He studied the pattern before he drew his forceps along that neat arrangement and found what he had sought._

_I leaned against his arm and watched the gentle flow of his hands which rose and fell like he composed a symphony written in chords of golden casings and balance screws._

_“Time is a man-made construct,” he told me. “In some faraway part of the universe, where little aliens babble with each other through their antennae, there might not be such a concept as time; no pocket-watches nor big grandfather clocks to guide them.”_

_Held underneath the magnifying-glass, the intricate swirls and pattern carved into the gold plate shifted and twirled as if brought to life. He tapped the arm of his chair and I sprung forward to hold the forceps that he gifted me, because he had gotten into the habit of letting me finish his pocket-watches for him until he could seal those glittering numbers behind glass._

_“But if the concept of time never existed in their world, then maybe the aliens are happier without it, because nothing ends for them – it continues. I think I much prefer how those little aliens do it,” I said._

_He had brewed a fresh pot of tea for us and its steam rose from its spout in licking wisps. I took the floral-patterned teacup that he had left for me and poured in the warm ochre-coloured tea and sweetened it with sugar-cubes. I swallowed a mouthful and felt its warmth trickle downward from my throat. In the jar closest to where I sat, I spotted my reflection, distorted and drawn up into horrid shapes that shifted and flowed._

_“Then that explains it,” he said, his hand lifting to press his thumbs against my temples. “I suspected it all along.”_

_“Suspected what?”_

_“That our little Astrid was sprouting antennae of her own,” he answered, “for she comes from someplace without pocket-watches and grandfather clocks.”_

_He loosened an old notebook from between the long row of others practically welded together on his shelf and tossed it onto his desk and it bumped against a withered plant, whose petals flaked off_ _in pairs._ _He brushed aside those curled, rotted petals._

_Then, he swivelled in his chair and placed the pocketwatch in my hands, cupped together like the pocket-watch might turn to liquid and pool downward to the hardwood flooring of his study._

_“Perhaps those aliens are happier,” Pogo said finally. “But there is something to be said for holding a pocket-watch in the palm of your hand and finding yourself in its ticking sound."_

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

_one week **before**_

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

monday

Rainwater fell from the gutters overhead and sent onslaughts of gushing water through the street. Murky brown water slopped onto the pavement in gentle laps that touched against my shoes and swept back out again, like curling tides in an ocean. There was an awning overhead an antique store that we used for shelter and its blue material bucked and fought against the wind; its snapping corners flicked beaded rain against the nape of my neck.

I remembered another night when Klaus had pinched the collar of my jumper and dropped a blind slug into the gap and the slug curled and caught on the creases and stuck against my spine and the droplets spat against my skin felt were like that; slimy and alien, wet and unpleasant in their coldness.

I felt the artificial hand of my mother wrap around mine. I glanced up at her and saw that she was smiling at the ground, nodding toward a small wooden matchbox which spun and dipped and bobbed behind tattered old shreds of newspaper and gnarled cigarette-butts in the makeshift river that ran alongside the pavement, weaving its winding path through that trash until it finally crashed against the hardened shell of a beetle wedged between some sewer-grates.

I slipped away from my mother and darted into the downpour despite her calling for me.

In the cabinets that lined the house, there were all sorts of beetles that our father had collected; foreign bugs with long-winded names, identified by splotchy patterned shells and angled pincers. I thought one had crawled out of its frame somehow and fallen into the sewers in its desperate search to find itself again. I stooped low on that pavement, though, and realised that it was not one of those beetles caught between the sewer-grates.

Instead, it turned out to be some kind of plastic wrapping that had been dented and reflected the acid-blue lights of store-fronts in its craters. I reached out, gripping its sides and yanking it out from the sewers.

The matchbox shuddered sideways and slipped into the dark pit with a saddened _plop_.

Clouded lumps rose on the plastic wrapping and I pressed them down with the pads of my thumbs to peer through the whiteness. It was a book, its cover made of an illustration that showed an astronaut whose colouring had faded so much that it seemed the stars of his galaxies had already exploded and scattered their stardust into other places faraway. The name of the author were chipped and worn too much to tell its letters apart. The spine was broken and lined in rough furrows, like it had been loved and cherished and lost accidentally.

I stood and turned back to my mother. The rain had eased; the monsoon had ended and her umbrella tipped toward the ground.

“What treasures have you found for me this time, Astrid?”

▬

I held the book in one hand and hers in the other while we walked and I had finished the first chapter before we had even passed through the looming gates of our house. I followed her to my bedroom and read while she found fresh pyjamas for me, helped shed my sopping socks, spread toothpaste on my toothbrush, led me back toward my bed, peeled apart the sheets for me to slide in comfortably. I had read it all before I had even touched the pillows.

She reached for the string that dangled from my lamp and pulled it, flushing us both in soft yellow. She perched alongside me. There was an odd comfort in how the mattress dipped beneath her and she rested her hand on mine again. “What was your book about, sweetheart?”

“It was about this astronaut trapped alone in a spaceship that malfunctioned,” I told her. “The spaceship drifts into a part of space that affects time. He meets future versions of himself. He sends out distress signals that are never answered. He runs out of supplies and the future versions of himself begin to disappear, which means that his death must happen eventually for him not to exist at all.”

“How did it end?”

“He repairs the spaceship,” I said, “and continues back to Earth.”

She kissed my forehead again and smoothed away strands of hair. “Then I can sleep well knowing our little astronaut made it back to Earth to be with me.”

▬

The book slid into the ravine of creases beside my limp arms and she placed it on the bedside table moments later, switching off that light that reminded me of something distant and faint. I pretended to sleep until she shut the door and then I kicked off the bed-sheets, slipping out to reach for the satchel underneath my bed. I crept out into the hall and went to find him, because he would be waiting for me; he was always waiting there.

▬

The wallpaper had peeled from around the arch and dangled in thickened strips and its curled edges rippled against the faint chill that slivered between the gaps in the cloudy windowpanes before running across the room in a whistle. The staircase was somewhat shrouded behind a fallen beam that I crouched to fit beneath, emerging on the other end through the small opening and stooping beneath sloping ceilings.

There he sat, one knee drawn against his chest upon which his arm rested, dangling languidly, turned toward the dimming light.

In the past few months of summertime, the heat had bubbled the paint on the windowsill beneath the arched window and small flakes had fluttered onto the floorboards that creaked and sighed beneath each step. I felt the rounded lumps of paint press into the flesh of my legs once I climbed onto the ledge, looking between the milky patches that fogged the glass and finding the roofs of other homes blended into the clouds. There was a tin-box on the windowsill between us; if opened, it would be filled with Polaroids and postcards bundled in rubber-bands and one spare packet of gum tucked alongside a bag of white marbles and finally a crinkled map of the world.

He looked at me and said, “What took you so long?”

“I brought you something,” I told him. “I think we could put it with the other stuff, after.”

Then, I handed him the book and he skimmed the blurb, turning it this way and that.

“About an astronaut,” I said. “You should read it. I think you would like it.”

Number Five looked up from the book and smiled at me.

▬

Stooping beneath the wooden beam, I followed him out from the disused room and into the hall, taking the staircase that led toward our bedrooms. He held in the book in his left hand and often glanced its cover, his brows pinched together; his other hand was loose around mine, not at all like the warm and present touch of my mother, but more like he wanted to tether me there beside him and make sure that I would not drift off like a kite. It had been like that between us for a long time, latching onto each other with imagined rope so that one would not fly too far from the other. It had to be like that, in this house.

▬

Both of us stood outside our own doors, facing each other. And he went into his room and I went into mine, and still we felt the tugging of those ropes, back and forth, back and forth.

▬


	2. tuesday

# ☂

▬

tuesday

The bell woke us before our mother could, her gentle calls drowned out by the harsh clanging. I fell from bed, dressed myself and tried to find shoes, patting around until I grabbed the same pair that I had worn the night before I scraped at the dried mud that caked the edges of the soles. I hopped into the hall with one shoe slipping off, fiddling with my tie and bumping right into Number Two. He licked his thumb and bent to wipe away the scuffmarks on my shoes, knotting the laces and then standing to smooth out the crinkles in my shirt.

“Dad is like a drill-sergeant with these inspections, Astrid,” he scolded. “I’m not checking you again.”

Even while he said it, his hands reached to unfold the dented curl of my collar and he sought more creases; he found none and his lips lifted into the kind of smile that reminded me of our mother – warm and soft and kind and all things that our father had never been. He slung his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close, lightly bumping his fist against my cheek to tease me.

“Next inspection, you’re on your own,” he said.

Diego smiled again; he had been saying those same words since we had turned seven years old.

▬

Our father wore a monocle that sparked against light and clouded his eye and I wondered if that hidden eye could tell him what his other eye could not; he seemed always on the cusp of revealing some grand secret about us in those morning spent lined against the wall in the kitchen for his inspections of our uniform, before breakfast, when our mother would stand aside with a pitcher of orange-juice cradled in her hands and an inoffensive smile on her face.

He walked with his hands behind his back and his hidden eye cracked around his skull in violent flashes of golden light that cut right through us. Sometimes, we stood there for a couple of seconds or three hours. It taught us endurance, he said, to stand there like we did, with that wall behind us but never allowing us to lean against it even if our legs turned numb and sore while he peeled us open with his hidden eye and scraped out the bad parts that he found.

After so many years of it, I marvelled that he found anything bad at all, because he had scraped and scraped and still he seemed to continue onward in his slashing and cutting and _knowing_.

Then, his pinched face smoothed into blank disinterest and he barked out, “ _Sit_!”

Scuttling to our places at the table, we dutifully hacked at our bacon with butter-knives that were not nearly sharp enough for the dried-out strip of meat, before we sliced the wet eggs open and turned the plate pale-yellow, eyes flitting between each other and the looming figure of our father sat at the head of the table if he had chosen not to skip breakfast like he normally did.

He watched us without ever touching the cutlery at either side of his own plate and we felt the cold ripple of egg-whites curling down our throats to our churning stomachs. He would never speak on those rare mornings that he sat with us; but his hidden eye would slash and slash and slash at us, seeking out what he had missed in the inspections.

▬

The breakfast ended with another chime of the bell and all my siblings scattered apart from Number Five. I brought our dishes to the basin and my mother dipped her hands into the sudsy water, playfully flicking bubbles at me. She snatched a tea-cloth from the countertop and dabbed at my face, pressing her lips against that furrowed spot between my brows.

She smiled and tapped my forehead with her fingertip. “There,” she said. “All your troubles taken away for me to carry instead.”

▬

Afterward, Number Five and I crossed through the mud that filled the garden in watery slop until we reached dull green doors. These doors creaked apart and showed the narrow strip of hallway that had been claimed by Pogo despite its famished plants that drooped from lack of sunlight, its windows shrouded behind dense curtains. I wondered what had made him want this part of the house that had been forgotten, its rooms mismatched and thrown together like some unseen hand had taken apart different dollhouses and muddled them.

Pogo had taken the study marked by its glossy dark cherry-wood doors. The clutter that had soon consumed what little space he had in that room had been placed with great delicacy and adoration for the antique books detailing entomology and the glass-jars filled with foreign insects, yellowed envelopes slopping from a pile and plants much more cared for than those that lined the hall; and though I loved that disused room that had become a hideout for myself and Five, I loved that little study even more.

“Good luck,” Number Five said, pulling his hands from his pockets and held out his little finger for me to link around mine.

Radiating blue light slit through the stagnant air in the hall and he stepped through this makeshift portal, its wobbling edges slowly stitching together until there was nothing left to suggest that it had ever been there at all, and it was then that the dark cherry-wood doors parted to reveal the other experiment that our father had created: Pogo.

He wore turtle-shell spectacles and walked with a golden-tipped cane; he was also a chimpanzee and sole companion that our father had ever known, because our father looked at our mother like an unwanted houseguest.

“Astrid,” Pogo smiled warmly. “Right on time.”

He had brewed a fresh pot of tea for us and its steam rose from its spout in licking wisps. I took the floral-patterned teacup that he had left for me and poured in the warm ochre-coloured tea and sweetened it with sugar-cubes. I swallowed a mouthful and felt its warmth trickle downward from my throat.

He loosened an old notebook from between the long row of others practically welded together on his shelf and tossed it onto his desk and it bumped against a withered plant, whose petals flaked off in pairs. “Oh, drat. I have been meaning to water that poor little peace-lily,” he murmured. “Well then, Astrid, did you bring your old pocket-watch?”

I fished around my pocket and pulled it out, brushing its scuffed edges. “Never go anywhere without it.”

“Good,” he said. “Shall we get started then?”

There was an ancient sofa in his study whose cushions had lost their padding and whose frame was dipped inward at its middle-point, so that it felt more like a hammock than anything. But I stretched myself out across its tired frame like I had done for months, settling my hands on my stomach and watching Pogo shift aside more stacks of paper and more journals with long titles and hundreds of tabs sticking from between the pages. He took a familiar die from his drawer and placed it on the desk before he came and sat in the armchair closest to me.

I balanced the pocket-watch on the arm of the sofa, right beside my left ear. “Ready.”

“You hear the ticking quite clearly?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I hear it.”

“All right.” He had a clipboard upon which he wrote little notes and the scratching of his pen was soothing. “Then you may leave your body whenever you like.”

Separating astral-form from physical-form was less difficult than it once had been; there was no strain and no sense that I would turn and throw-up into a well-placed bucket, no sense that the world was spinning too fast on its axis for me to find myself, because Pogo had figured out that the ticking of the pocket-watch steadied me in that other form, its ticking like a beacon that brought me back to myself. So, leaving my body had become the same as shedding an old jumper and sopping wet socks after being caught in rainfall with my mother.

I shed that old jumper and I shed those sopping wet socks to stand in his study and only Pogo could see me, because I had allowed him to see me. It was as simple as thinking it – _I want Pogo to see me_ – and then he _could_ see me.

“Marvellous work. Shall we attempt to move the die from one side of the table to the other?”

There it sat on his table, mocking the astral-form that I had taken because I could not yet force my limbs to touch things; for example, I could walk through the walls of a bank but not touch the money because I could not make my hand suddenly tangible. There was some kind of disconnect in my brain and my hand would fade into the wood like smoke was blown against it, fading outward into tendrils that then returned once I had pulled my hand back out.

The violent ticking forward of the golden hands on the pocket-watch reached me and I glanced back at my body still limp on the sofa, for all the world like I had fallen asleep.

“Keep trying, Astrid,” Pogo said. “There can be nothing without trying.”

I had to concentrate on that small die sitting on its side and imagined how Five would jump from room to room with his fists clenched and eyebrows drawn tight in thought, forcing himself to move. I recalled the steady dripping of the rain on concrete from the storm last night, the wet flecks that hit my skin, the squelch of socks, the squeaking rubber of shoes. I focused on the physicality of these things, the response that my body had – I dreamt of writhing slugs caught in mud, blindly flopping back and forth while Vanya pushed Klaus aside because she was afraid he might step on them.

I tipped the die from the side with one dot; it rolled to the side with three dots and the incessant scratching of his pen against his clipboard stilled.

“Clever girl, Astrid!” Pogo breathed out. “Absolutely extraordinary!”

In the rush of excitement, I returned to my own body – slipped on the jumper, the socks, stood upright and revelled in the sheer weight of myself for having limbs that could touch and extend and _feel_. I pushed myself off the sofa like a new-born calf struggling on its stilt-like legs but Pogo had also stood and rested his hands on my shoulders for balance.

“Your father will be so impressed, Astrid. Take a moment to recover while I run and fetch him.”

▬

I waited for almost half-an-hour on the sofa with knots in my stomach that tightened and tightened anytime that I spotted the three dots on that die and I started to fiddle with the hem of my skirt, pulling threads, seeking out lint. I heard the footsteps in the hall and low murmurs and I stood with my spine straight as an arrow, because our father hated for us to slouch and he hated for us to seem disinterested. His monocle sparked and sparked and I felt less afraid of it.

“Astrid has made some remarkable progress,” Pogo continued, for he had been talking about me in the hall; I had heard his pride, his warmth.

I stepped into the blind-spot where the monocle usually could not find me and he leaned close to me. I was like an insect yanked from its hard shell, left to drown between sewer-grates. He loomed over me, his shoulders hunched inward, his face pushed close to mine. The scent of lemon-drops and our detergent clung to his clothing. It occurred to me that I had never thought about our Mom washing his clothes with ours. Everything he did had always seemed separate, like he existed in another world and dashed into ours whenever he felt like it.

“Show me,” he said.

I laid out like I had done before, stretched out on a buckled sofa with the heady scent of tea in my nostrils and I stepped out of myself with that scent still wafting around me. There was the patient ticking of the pocket-watch and the nasally whistle of my father breathing from his armchair and Pogo was watching with his hands clasped in his lap, perched upon the edge of his seat, smiling so much that I thought his cheeks must surely hurt.

I focused again on all those physical things, the ticking of the clock hands melting into the other memories, of Luther placing a plaster on my kneecap after a fall in the garden and Klaus sharing his ice-cream with me one night while we watched a film together and I was not sure what had induced that sudden clarity in me that all it took was thinking of things that made my hand turn from smoking wisps to something solid and sure of itself.

The die tipped; six dots showed and again Pogo drew back in his armchair to clap for me, looking joyous and thrilled and I looked at my father to find that he was dull and disinterested and examining the dried mud on his shoes.

“I should think after two years of such intense work that you could do more than turn a die, Number Eight,” he murmured, “but here we are.”

Pogo had deflated into the worn padding of his armchair with what I imagined was the kind of expression that I wore – dismayed and unsurprised all at once. His glossy stare rose from the tattered carpet beneath his old shoes and met mine, lined in sorrow and remorse and all the things that passed between us while my father stood and marched into the hall without another word spoken from him.

“I am so very sorry, Astrid.”

I had an awful tightness in my throat. “Not your fault, Pogo. Besides, it was kinda childish anyway. Wasn’t really that big of a deal.”

He hauled himself from his armchair and his shoulders were slanted downward like he could not bear such heaviness and he hunched from the effort. His large hands cupped my arms and he drew me toward him in a hug that surprised me, but his cotton jumper was warm and prickly against my cheek and the comfort was such that I sniffled and tried not to do more than that.

Muffled against his jumper and flushed in hoarseness, I said, “I heard Dad and Luther talking together on Sunday. Under the oak-tree, in the garden. He told him that he should always want to be stronger, tougher. But he never tells me that. He never tells me that I should want to be stronger or tougher or anything more than what I am.”

“You _are_ strong, Astrid,” Pogo said gently. “And I feel immense pride in knowing that we have worked so well together throughout these lessons. I want you to know that what you did today was brilliant. What a clever girl you are and how privileged I am to know you as I do.”

In the glass jar closest to me, right beside us, I saw my reflection, distorted and drawn up into horrid shapes that shifted and flowed. _I_ felt distorted, drawn up. I tried to push myself back into the shape that I had once been but nothing was able to align itself like it had been.

▬

I went to the bathroom and perched on the edge of a bathtub and tried to smother the rising sense that I was adrift at sea. If I fell backward into the porcelain, I believed that its bottom would shimmer into nothingness and I would sink further and further toward a seabed that would never come.

▬

Having found Number Five sitting on a lonely bench, we unfolded the sandwiches that our mother lovingly wrapped in napkins; crusts shorn, lathered in dollops of peanut-butter and sealed with jelly. I ate mine in sluggish bites while he tore his own into three chunks. He tucked his napkin into triangular folds and placed it in his left pocket. He handed me some bottled water and together we shared it, back and forth.

“Do you want to tell me tonight?”

I glanced at him, squinting in the light. He was watching a flock of birds flitting upward in great scattered bursts of wings and synchronised dance, swooping in a melody to their left, dipping around in a swirl of sound to their right. His eyebrows were drawn, though, like he was thinking beyond the birds, beyond the house. I had been caught – he had sensed right away that there was something off with me even though I had done nothing differently. But that was Five. He looked at things more closely than others. He was smart and always had been.

“Okay.” I took another sip of water. “Tonight.”

He pursed his lips and nodded, shifting in his seat to lift the bottom of his shirt. He yanked the book about the astronaut out from where it rested between his stomach and waistband. “I finished it last night. I felt pretty sorry for the astronaut in the end; all that time spent repairing his spaceship while other future versions of himself _died_ around him and when he finally gets the whole thing working, it malfunctions again on his descent to Earth. Had one Hell of a run, though, didn’t he?”

“Guess the author was feeling sad the day that he wrote it.”

“Guess so.”

I tore apart the napkin that had been wrapped around my sandwich and let its shreds drift onto the wooden flooring of the gazebo.

▬

Mom had named me Astrid because she heard the name on the radio; she said that could never remember what the programme was about nor could she remember what day it had aired nor could she say that she heard anything clearly because she had been making cookies and the sudden rattle of the timer filled her eardrums. But she heard Astrid and thought it suited me just fine.

▬

That afternoon was spent with Ben in his bedroom, both stretched out on his bed at opposite ends, listening to records that he had taken from Luther. I rested with his feet beside my head while he did the same on his end, his arm propped behind his head for comfort. The record that spun provided a benign reason for the bouncing that plagued my foot and the rhythmic tapping of my fingertips against his headboard like I strummed the bass in this particular song.

“Astrid, have you ever thought about what you might do after this?”

“After what?”

Ben lifted a sluggish hand and waved it limply around his room. “ _This_ – the Academy, the family.”

Stuck to his ceiling were a smattering of glow-in-the-dark stars that he had stuck there himself. I followed the pattern and considered telling him about the tin-box hidden in the disused room and the whole plan that had been concocted in the past few months.

“Yes,” I said. “I think about it a lot. What about you?”

He was quiet. He said, “Yeah. But I think it would be hard to wake up in a place without all of you in it.”

I had finished reading the plastic constellation of his ceiling and shifted lower against the sheets, wiggling until he mimicked me and we could reach each other; his hand found mine and mine found his and we listened to an entire album together in the cocoon of his bedroom. 

▬

The night came sluggish and black and my mother pulled the curtains together to smother it. She kissed my forehead and smoothed the back of her hand against my cheek. She said, “Goodnight, little astronaut.”

▬

I imagined the subtle bluish hue of plastic stars and counted them again and again until the glinting hands on the clock in my room struck eleven. The stars flickered out, forgotten.

▬

The bubbled paint on the windowsill had popped and splintered into flakes that coated the floorboards. He nudged them into a pile with the tip of his shoe while he waited for me, his pale face drawn in contemplation. The wind blew through the room in its whistle again, squeezing itself through the windowpane, rustling his shorts. He had dressed in his usual form but had left his shirt untucked.

“Five?”

“Thought you’d never show up,” he said, smiling. “I caught Luther sneaking out of his room to see Allison.”

“I suppose it runs in the family,” I said. “Keeping secrets.”

Five drew his legs in for me to fit on the windowsill with him. The paint flaked some more, sprinkling in a loose shower onto the floorboards and what was left behind I had begun to peel and scratch at with my nails. He had waited for me and he waited again, because he wanted to know what had been bothering me so much during our time together with sandwiches and gazebos.

But I had to find the words and order them; that was the reason for all his waiting.

“In that lesson with Pogo, I managed to touch something,” I told him. “In the astral form, I mean.”

“Holy shit.” His eyes had widened, he fell back against the wall with this goofy smile on his face. “I knew you could do it.”

I shrugged and shrugged again, like a spasm had tightened my shoulders. I was tearing up little coatings of the paint until great blank splotches remained behind. “Dad thought it was two years wasted,” I said; the smallest laugh escaped me and its aftertaste was acid, its aftertaste was misery. “It was kind of silly, really. I turned a die and thought it was really something special.”

“It was special,” he said. “It is special, Astrid.”

I felt a beading sting behind my eyes. “I just wanted him to say that I made him proud.”

“Dad has never said that he was proud of any of us. Not even Luther.”

“I know,” I said. “But I wanted it anyway.”

Still leaning against the wall, he brought his knee against his chest and wrapped his arms around it, like he hugged himself, but his jaw remained tight and locked and his head was turned sideways to look blankly through those pearl-like windowpanes that blotted out the courtyard and spun our world into winter. I stopped that frantic scratching and peeling and sat very still to watch him. I wished that I had some kind of talent for drawing; that I could capture the subtle dent of his dimples and the shading of his collarbone and those little things often over-looked.

He teleported.

Blue flooded the room. I flinched from the harsh pop that gobbled up the vacuum where he had been though he had not gone far, jumping across the room and crouching to pull at that loose plank in the floor. He sifted around the trinkets that we had buried beneath the plank until he grasped the bag of marbles, rushing forward and disappearing into the blue light that cast the disused room in its dense colour, which then drained into the damper spots of the corners and dwindled. He tipped the bag and placed one marble between us. It rolled against his shoe.

“Show me,” he said.

The whistle that came from the gap in the windowpanes seemed to stuff my eardrums and pinkness flushed my cheeks. “What for?”

His shoulders lifted in a limp shrug and his grin was self-assured. “Because you can. Because it would be just as special.”

I fished for the pocket-watch and slipped off the windowsill. I had traced the scuffed and worn carvings of its golden casing hundreds of times, memorised each sloping and spiral pattern. I placed it on the windowsill, on a little bump that held it upright.

“How does the pocket-watch work? Is it the ticking sound that brings you back?”

I tapped it to ensure it would not slide off then glanced at him. “Sometimes,” I said. “But sometimes, it just reminds me of how intricate its pieces are and how much effort Pogo put into teaching me about each little part, because he said that all of them mattered the same – without one little wheel, the whole watch was useless.”

Five fell quiet, taking in its scratched glass. “It always works, right?”

I smiled. “Hasn’t failed me yet. But if you want to forget it and –…”

“No,” he interrupted. “I just want to make sure you’ll come back.”

The pocket-watch stuffed the room with its steady rhythm. I focused on that and not the blush that trickled from my hairline and flushed me fully in its pink colour. He rarely looked away from me if I blushed and he had this smugness to him that worsened the pink and darkened it to beetroot red.

“It might frighten you,” I told him. “It looks like I fell asleep.”

“I can handle a lot more than you think,” he said.

It was nothing to slip outside of myself, having sat against the wall so that my body might not slump over. I wanted him to see me – so he did. Number Five was almost always collected with a face smooth of expression, but his stare was wide and his mouth had parted. I wanted to touch him but that was enough; the marble which sat on the windowsill was enough, because Pogo had warned me not to push myself. I bent in front of the marble, then imagined the times that Ben had pushed me on a swing and Luther had defended me from mean kids.

The marble rolled and smacked against the windowpane.

“Holy shit,” Five swore. “Incredible.”

I turned to tell him that it really was as mundane as our father had thought, because we had spent two years on it and that was all that I could do. Behind him, though, were slits of blue light that slashed through the stagnant air of the disused room, dotted around at random. I thought if I touched it, I could part the lines and step through it myself. I had the oddest sense that I was not in the right world; like in a dream, when there is a sudden dawning that faces should not be blank ovals without features and that words had meaning and there was reasoning behind the rustling of grass and the heat of the sun.

“What are you looking at?”

I walked toward the nearest gash that floated blue and round and its edges were wobbling outward. I reached out for it and realised that its edges pulled away with my hand, like I had touched a cobweb and soft downy lines drifted from my fingertips. I looked at Five and saw that the blue threads that had rippled around the edges spun around him, too, like it had stuck to his clothing.

He had jumped to that spot moments earlier and it all clicked. “I can see your portals,” I said, eyes wide.

“Portals?”

“When you jump from spot to spot,” I said. “You leave behind something like a trail.”

The blue portal that floated closest to me suddenly stitched itself together like it had never even been there, seemingly swallowing itself. Others had lighter shades of blue that I figured meant they would seal themselves shut soon too. I followed the next portal and touched it. It seemed more like a doorway and I dared step through it – spat on the other side of the room just as quickly with the sense that I had been turned upside down, shaken, then dropped onto unsteady legs that wobbled and quaked.

“Holy shit,” he said again.

The floorboards in the hall outside whined and creaked. I felt the tension shoot through both of us, holding us in place. It happened sometimes that somebody passed in the hall to reach some other secluded spot, especially Allison and Luther who often sought out places where our father might not find them. But I still rushed to listen to the pocket-watch and step inside myself again, though blood thumped in my eardrums and the ticking seemed muffled for the first few seconds.

I reconnected the two halves of me and snatched the pocket-watch from the windowsill; the footsteps had receded into the faraway rooms beyond this one, softer and softer until there was nothing left of them. Five took the marble and placed it in his pocket before picking up the watch and turning it against the cold light straining through the glass.

“Whenever Dad tells me that I could do better – that I disappoint him,” he said quietly, taking in its glittering numbers, “I think about this room and the things beneath that floorboard. It tunes him out.”

“Do you think you would ever miss this place?”

Focused on something between the scratches on the watch, his eyes seemed colourless and blank. “No,” he answered simply. “But I would wish that I did.”

▬


	3. wednesday

# ☂

▬

wednesday

The trees spouted from the earth like the spindly legs of an insect and drifted back and forth above me like the world waved at some passing comet somewhere behind the clouds. I waited for Luther to bandage his hands, standing at the bench nearby, his bulky frame blocking out the sunlight that warmed my face, reaching down to offer his hand. I played dead, arms stretched out and still flat on my back with eyes squeezed shut. I tried not to smile at his frustrated sigh and felt him grip my wrist, though Luther was always careful with his strength. Then he shook me lightly and his shoulders dipped in annoyance.

" _Astrid_ –…"

His tone was so strict and authoritarian that I let out a small snicker. "I can't hear you, Luther. I'm dead."

Luther dragged me from the grass with ease. Though the spots of sunlight that slipped through the old trees, I spotted a reluctant smile on his face too. He shook me twice, then continued to pull me along until my shoulders ground against concrete and light pebbles rather than soft bristling grass. He had brought me to our training spot, a small patch of pathway with some weights and ropes.

Luther crouched above me and poked at my cheek. "You know, you _do_ look kinda pale. You _smell_ bad like a corpse, too. Maybe I should call Klaus down here just to be sure. Maybe _he_ should be the one training you and not me."

"I think I might be able to revive myself," I mumbled, lifting myself from the ground. "And I do not smell bad, you big jerk."

He grinned. "All right, we can start with some light sparring. No shields, no telekinesis."

"Because I would easily beat your ass if I could use them."

"Watch the language," he replied, reaching out to mess up my hair. "And, for the record, you could _never_ beat my ass, pipsqueak."

For a little while, he sparred with light punches and gentle kicks that slowly morphed into harder jabs and sweeping draws that knocked my legs from beneath me and sent me to the ground. Sometimes, he would let me push him further and further back toward the brick-wall behind him and I would think that I finally had him, but then he would find some opening beneath my arm to tap my ribcage or catch my jaw and I would wipe away the sweat which crowded my brow and start up again, punching and punching.

"Grab some water, Astrid," he said eventually. "Take a second to catch your breath."

I dropped onto my bottom and gulped some bottled water. I patted down my arms and face with the towels that he had brought. While turned sideways to dab at my neck, I saw that Vanya was sitting across the courtyard, leafing through a book balanced on her lap.

"Do you think Vanya might want to practice with us?" I asked.

"What for? She never comes on missions."

I shrugged. "Just for fun."

There was no sweat on him, no sense that he needed water or time to recover. He looked up from the ropes in his hands, preparing for the next round, and said, "She would hurt herself or tire out in ten minutes and start complaining."

"I complain all the time."

"Really? Never noticed," he grinned, tossing the ropes at me.

I tore them off and threw some water at him, smiling. I gripped the handles on the ropes and started to jump with him, knees up, breathing hard. Vanya was forgotten; the next time that I glanced her way, she had vanished.

▬

The women in the paintings that lined the hall had coal-black stares purposefully made blank and void, like their worlds had already been based in oil and locked in golden borders long before a paintbrush had been dipped into swirled blends of paint on a palette. Soft lights curled from their frames like wiry antennae, their bulbs faint and yellow. Pogo told me that sunlight bleached painting and would rot the pretty faces of those ladies sat proper and rigid in lavish armchairs.

Sat beneath their mournful stares, I stuck needle through linen and pulled and stuck needle through linen and pulled and stuck needle through linen and pulled; the lettering outlined itself in black thread and filled itself, like it had woven itself without the need for me to pull floss and snip thread and follow patterns which spelled DIEGO overhead two crossed knives – its bordering had taken almost a month because I was new in the world of embroidery.

"The others will want one too, you know," Mom said. "Careful with that stitch, Astrid."

I found myself wishing for the hundredth time that I looked more like my mother. It had never been enough for me that I had blonde hair like hers, because its tones were too dull and nothing like the liquid gold that made her curls. I wanted the blueness of her stare to somehow replace the greenness of mine and to pin back my ears and shrink them to resemble hers and for my jawline to be more defined, so that someday a kindly stranger might comment on our similarities.

"Do you think Diego will like it?"

"Of course he will," she said. "Why, he even kept all the paintings you made for him when you were kids."

I traced the letters of his name. "I think I'll find a frame for it. Then I can make one for Five."

Mom was sewing a small house beside a river and its detail was beyond the simple lines of what I had made and I watched her hands delicately pluck the needle through linen. It reminded me of the first piece of mine that she had placed in the kitchen even if it showed an unoriginal ballerina traced from a picture, her arms stretched overhead in a pirouette and her tutu cut with jagged spikes. I had accidentally lined her skirt in harsh lines. But my mother had taken it from me and said, _how clever, Astrid – she can poke at all the other ballerinas that try to hog the stage_!

"Pogo told me you did exceptionally well this week, honey. I heard your father even stopped by. What did he think of what you learned in your lesson?"

"He thought it was great," I said.

Cool remorse spread through my limbs at her pleased nod. I never wanted to tell little fibs to her, but Mom had this aura of stifled happiness that I could not bring myself to quash. It should not matter to me that my father thought me useless, because my mother believed my ballerinas had spiked tutus and my astronauts returned from space and all my troubles stewed behind her brow and not mine.

I added, "We worked on astral projection."

She lifted a long strand of thread and snipped it with her scissors. "Oh," she said.

I remembered last night and the odd distortion of the room that seemed to bend and warp behind the waxing blue portals. I tried to find the words to describe it and said, "Sometimes I think our world feels like a painting of its own and I can find its frame, Mom."

"I always liked that painting the most."

I looked up at her and saw that her coal-black stare floated somewhere between the frames, unfocused.

▬

I found Allison in my bedroom, lounging on my bed, idly flipping through a magazine that showed herself on its cover. I flopped beside her and glanced at its glossy spread, full of teenage boys and tips on make-up and then there was Allison, her name written in bubble-letters, shiny and plastic. She was pretty like the other models, her face alight in a smile, one hand flat on her jeans and the other on her hip.

"Did you like it?" I asked. "Being a model?"

She shrugged. "The camera focused on me longer than Dad ever has, that's for sure."

▬

Smoke billowed from a ventilator overhead and steeped the alleyway in its horrid, burnt odour. The fumes from passing cars blended into it, heady and nauseating in its thickness. I dropped from the metal railings of the fire-escape and felt my ankles rattle against the tarmac. I righted the straps of my backpack and continued onward through the alleyway that separated our house from the building beside it.

"Astrid?"

Vanya had blended into the cold stone of the front steps that led into our house, mousy hair hanging limply around her pale face, so that I hadn't noticed her until she called out to me. She stared up at me with confusion knitting her light brows. She lifted her hand flat against her forehead to block the light.

"What are you doing?"

Spurned by a sudden desire to make her stand out from that stone, I said, "Do you want to come with me?"

Her hand fell. "Where?"

"Do you want to come with me?" I repeated.

The house loomed behind her and seemed to hold her there on its steps, like her skirt had been glued to its entrance. Cars honked, babies wailed in passing strollers, the Earth turned – and still Vanya dithered, anxiously scraping her teeth against her lip while she glanced behind at the house, like she suspected that hidden eye kept us in its line of sight and she was now stepping into its blind-spot.

She peeled herself from the steps and said, "Okay. Yeah. I – I would like that."

▬

The underground flooring was sticky and slick black and coated in scattered cigarette-butts that felt squishy beneath my shoes. The tunnel that led toward the platforms wound this way and that, its walls patterned in tiles formed from different shades of brown. Overhead, its ceilings were dotted in fuzzing rods for acid-white light, bleaching the faces of passing strangers into featureless ovals.

I craned my neck to look at the fuzzing signs above us, pursing my lips. "How about Montgomery?"

Vanya tore her thumb from between her lips, having gnawed at the flesh around her nail. "What?"

"Montgomery– right there, on the green line." I counted the dots on the glossy map overhead. "Tenth stop from here."

"What are you looking for there?"

I stared at its small dot and shrugged, turning toward her again. "Not much."

Her hand still hovered against her mouth, suspended as if she had forgotten that it was attached to her. Brief flashes of orange from trains darting behind me slashed through her pupils and hid her thoughts from me. I felt swallowed in the crowd that had grown around us and stepped closer to her.

I sensed the churning anxiety furled tight in her chest. I touched her shoulders to separate from those briefcases and pencil-skirts, letting them drip from her vision until it was just us in this underground, together.

"You could still walk home from here, if you changed your mind."

"I want to come with you," she said. "What about tickets?"

"What about 'em?"

She started up that gnawing at her nails again.

The platform was gusty, its tunnels like dark pits that roared from wind following the train and all that wind rustled her hair, lashing strands against her shy smile. I dodged the bare skin of her hand and loosely grasped the cuff of her jumper to pull her with me toward the platform, purposefully jostling between people to reach the yellow-lined edge of the platform in front. The train billowed through, stopped, and its doors whistled open.

I grasped a pole and pulled her with me. There were other girls in school uniforms whose hyena-eyes sought us out between the gush of strangers spilling into the carriage. Vanya shrank into herself, peeking back at the girls from behind a fringe of dark hair. The train soon shook itself from sleep and sluggishly chugged forward.

"There must be something you want," Vanya said. "In Montgomery, I mean."

"No, not really. I chose it randomly."

"Do you do this often?"

"Take trains? Sure."

Her eyes narrowed. "You know what I mean. Sneak out and – just disappear, I guess."

I felt that we had burrowed through the flesh of an exotic caterpillar and its long body snaked through tall grass, for the train swerved around tight corners and forced us to crash together. I rocked back and forth against that pole, against Vanya, bumping into her, drawing back, bumping into her, drawing back.

"Sometimes," I said. "When I feel like it."

Behind her, a man folded the broadsheet that he had been leafing through, standing up from his seat for the next stop that rattled toward us. The train shuddered and sank into stillness and out through those doors he went, but on his seat there was something fluffy that had gotten caught between the plastic coatings on the chairs. I nudged around Vanya to take it, slipping into the seat and grabbing what I realised was a rabbit's foot. I turned it around and showed her the little chain that meant it was supposed to be attached to keys.

"Supposed to be lucky," Vanya said, slipping into the seat alongside me. "But what will you do with it?"

I hesitated. "You would laugh," I repeated finally.

Exasperated, she turned to face me fully and looked into my eyes. "Astrid, I promise you I will not laugh."

"And you can never tell the others."

She drew back. "Why? Is it dangerous?"

I smiled at her concern, shaking my head. "No. But Dad might not like it so much. I mean, Five might not want me to tell you either, but of all our brothers and sisters, I think he would be most willing to tell you himself, if he really had to tell anybody."

Pink flushed her cheeks and she fiddled with the cuffs of her blazer. "You guys can trust me. I promise."

Outside, the blister of blue lights in the tunnel spun faster and faster until it looked like one continuous line, like the train had thrown us into the galaxy and we floated along in this non-world.

"Five and I collect things," I said. "We keep them under the floorboards of a room in the house; one of the rooms Dad just never uses. Like he forgot about it."

"Oh," she said, looking down at her lap before she watched me again. "Why would that make me laugh?"

I chewed at the fleshy inside of my lip. "Because we want to bring them when we leave."

The other girls across from us laughed loudly and her cheeks turned pink and splotchy. I wondered if they were laughing at us, in our strange uniforms, in our strange existence, but none of them seemed to glance at us at all. I felt the same simmering embarrassment that Vanya did, though, without understanding what I was really embarrassed about.

"Leave," Vanya repeated. "Leave – _where_?"

I let my head fall back against the seat, soaking in the starch-white lights that flit through the tunnel. "We never planned that far ahead," I said. "But we talk about what this apartment might like look – or a house. Sometimes, we think we want a house and, other times, we think we want an apartment. In this city, in another, wherever – but we'll bring those little trinkets that we found and put them all around, so we remember."

"Remember what?"

The blend of colours around me had blurred my eyes. "That we were kids once," I said. "That we wanted out and we made it."

"Do you really hate it so much at home?"

"No," I answered. "But what I like about home has never been anything to do with the Academy."

Vanya slumped in her seat; the stops passed and passed until we were mere seconds away from Montgomery and then she said, "For what it's worth, I don't think that's stupid at all."

▬

In Montgomery, there was nothing around apart from some towering grey buildings stacked with glass and steel and all things ugly until Vanya spotted a smaller beige building tucked between the skyscrapers. Its carving read NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM and she rummaged through her pockets for some change to pay for two tickets, though I spotted a cluster of school-children just like us marching in rows toward the entrance and pulled her toward them, ignoring her nervous protests that we would be caught.

There were two teachers at either end of the winding snake of children with hands held and hefty schoolbags sagging from their shoulders. I found a gap and jumped in front of some other kids who were too busy showing each other their lunchboxes. Squinting closely, I noticed that one of them showed The Umbrella Academy, their hands covering the circles that showed me and Klaus.

We slipped out of the line once through the first barriers, ducking underneath the red rope and bursting into one of the galleries. Vanya was windswept and bewildered, squeezing my hand so tightly that I felt it might just fall off entirely. Even Luther had less of a grip than that.

Beneath the off-white lights, the mammoth bones were glossy and slick and we walked beneath the bleached ribcage of another animal that hung overhead on thin wires, spanning so long in length that its white tail coiled inward at the other end of the room, dipped toward the glass casing that held stuffed hyenas and wolves and wild dogs. I liked their sharp canines and in the reflection of the glass I poked at my gums and held my lips in a snarl that I showed Vanya.

She was looking around for security guards. "We could go to _prison_."

"Great, Klaus should already be there by the time we arrive."

The gift-shop had air-conditioning that bristled the fur of plushie toys stacked atop one another, assorted in colours and not really species. I took a small pinkish-yellowish chameleon for myself and another one for Five as well as a toy lion for Vanya. I stuffed a handful of pamphlets into my pocket. I looked for Vanya between the mugs and jumpers and shirts and jewellery and found her staring at a poster that showed the evolution of man.

She noticed the plushies and her mouth coiled. "I don't think I brought enough to pay for those, Astrid. But we could come back another time, maybe.

"Or we could sneak out back," I said, grinning at her. "Come on, Vanya, live a little!"

"If Dad found out –…"

"Dad is holed up in his office at home," I said, "and even if I threw myself down the stairs outside, he would probably yell that the noise was distracting him and carry on working. So, forget about Dad and take the damn lion. I think it suits you."

"A lion?"

I heard the doubt in her voice. "Sure. Brave, smart."

Vanya took the lion and touched its button nose, looking up at me with wide eyes.

"We should take the train soon," I said. "Dad might not notice we left, but Mom or Pogo will, soon enough."

Having walked ahead a few steps, I turned to find she was still standing there with the lion and I linked her arm with mine to make her walk beside me.

▬

On the train, she was quiet. I sat in the seat beside her and watched the strangers milling around us, dreaming of their lives, adding little stories for each detail that I noticed on their clothing or drafting their backgrounds on scarring and moles and birthmarks. I slouched against the hard seat and leaned my head on Vanya's shoulder. I heard her say something that was lost in the thrum of the tunnels and I adjusted myself to hear her better.

"Happy, I guess," she said; the second half was lost. Then, through the hum, I heard, "Some place out there, too."

I shifted and lay against her shoulder again, closing my eyes.

▬

Climbing the staircase, I carried a board-game underneath my arm, because I usually played with Five in the afternoons but struggled to find him in the house. I had passed Ben reading and Allison sitting with Luther and Klaus setting dollars on fire for fun but I still could not find Five. I turned left and bumped right into Diego. His boots were made of a leather that scrunched and loosened as he stepped against the tiles and blocked me.

"Have you seen Five?"

"You upset Mom," he said.

"What?"

His arms crossed over his chest. "She said you were talking about paintings and frames," he said. "It upset her. You know that astral projection stuff scares her, Astrid."

The words that I had planned to tell him fizzled in my throat and I swallowed them right up. I felt cornered and embarrassed and it spoiled the fun that I had had with Vanya. I pushed around him and stormed right for my room, ignoring his calls for me to come back.

▬

Orange sunlight spilled from my doorway and I wondered if I had left it open like that or if Klaus had crept in to steal some paper to burn or if Allison had wanted to borrow my hairbrush. But it was nothing like that, for Five was lain on my bed with the book about the astronaut in his hands. He said nothing, only kicked his shoes off the bedpost and sat up properly.

He disappeared in a flash of blue and the book dropped to the ground behind him. It was bookmarked on the page in which the astronaut talks to another future version of himself and talks about childhood. Crinkled at the bottom of the page was a sticky-note that read: MEET ME IN THE GREENHOUSE.

▬

I used to spent time with Ben and Allison in the greenhouse tucked up on the rooftop of our house, but like most little habits of ours, I could not remember just when we had stopped planting and potting and caring; it was the missions that had taken over, seeped in through the cracks in the corrugated ceiling of the greenhouse, forced our attention elsewhere. It was the reason for the dead plants that clustered the wooden tables in the greenhouse, drooping and shedding blackened petals.

Five was fiddling with rusted pliers. "I figured this place was more secure."

The air hung muggy and sour around us. I had to lean against the door to shut it and even then it left a slit. I stepped across shards of terracotta from shattered pots and asked, "Secure for _what_ , exactly?"

"For me to tell you that I want to time travel."

I waited for our siblings to pop out from behind the metal sheets that reinforced the walls and burst out into laughter at me but there was no prank, no joke. I had known him all my life and I recognised the solid expression on his face and the stubborn curl of his hands into fists and his mouth held tight and firm against all objection. I felt cold and crowded like the greenhouse had shrunk around me.

"What makes you think you could jump through more than just the space around you, Five?"

"I read that book," he answered. "It set off the idea in my head."

"That book is nothing but fiction," I said. "Nobody could possibly –…"

"Nobody could possibly move things with astral energy," he interrupted. "Nobody could create shields and weapons with astral energy, nobody could control minds with a set of words, nobody could talk to the dead – all of what we do is impossible to everybody else. What makes this any different?"

"Because you might get stuck," I said weakly. "You might get confused and never come back."

He softened and dropped that feigned disinterest in his face, dropping the pliers. "I would come back. Just like how you always come back, Astrid."

"You don't know that."

"I'll tell Dad tomorrow," he said. "I'll ask for lessons with Pogo, like your lessons."

I felt somewhat mollified; firstly because I doubted that our father would ever allow it and secondly because if he did allow it then it would be monitored and Pogo would be brought in to ensure that Five was not jumping between decades by himself. So, I tried to smile and though it wobbled, he smiled right back.

"I was thinking if it all works out, you could even come with me," he said. "We could do it together – just us on our own, like always."

I crushed another shard beneath my boot and gulped down the acid taste of fear that filled my mouth.

▬

Walking through the house together, I felt something was different in the lobby and looked around until it hit me - the chandelier had fallen and it was clouded in that same misty blue.

"Five, can you see that?"

From how his eyes studied the room around us and his brow crinkled, I understood that it was for me alone to witness.

"The chandelier is on the ground."

"Look above you, Astrid," he said.

Overhead, the chandelier hung right where it always had; its crystals glittered, its chain was embedded in the ornate ceiling with its lattice patterns. I looked down and found that the other chandelier had melted into the ground and a small puddle of swirling blue remained until that, too, dripped into some unseen drain.

▬

I crept toward my bedroom and touched the handle of my door but stilled at the sound of thrashing and whimpering. I knew that it was Klaus in his bed, fighting against sleep and the shrieking voices of the dead and I debated what I should do – call Mom to come and console him or spare him the pity and return to bed myself.

Instead, I pushed open his door and ground match-sticks and lighters and pocket-knives beneath my shoes to reach him. I shook his shoulder and noticed the glean of sweat on his skin. His eyes were still squeezed tightly shut and he was whispering something beneath his breath, so lowly that I tried to lean in to hear him.

"Klaus," I whispered. "Klaus, it's me."

He finally stirred from his half-sleep, his cheeks turning red. "Astrid?"

"Can I sleep beside you?"

"What? Why?"

I figured if I told him the truth, he would scoff and make jokes and do anything possible to deny his struggles because he had always shrugged off any attempt at understanding what he heard and how _much_ he heard from the dead. Klaus never stopped talking – but about the voices he heard, he was silent.

"I had a nightmare," I lied.

"Oh," he mumbled. "I thought you would go to Five or Diego."

I panicked and said, "Diego has cold feet and Five steals the blankets. Can't I stay with you?"

Klaus lifted his blankets and I dropped beside him, shrugging off my shoes. He shifted onto his side and mumbled, "Jokes on you, Astrid. I have cold feet _and_ I hog the blankets too. Now you're trapped with me."

I smiled to myself, snuggling lower into his pillow. He fell asleep quite quickly and I was not sure if I really did anything to soothe him or not, but he never made another sound all night.

▬


	4. thursday

# ☂

▬

thursday

The bell woke us with is familiar death-rattle; eyes crusted in sleep, I tried to find my tie and slip on knee-high socks, hopping around, aware of the thundering footsteps in the hall as the others rushed from their rooms to stand downstairs. I tumbled after them and remembered that I had forgotten my daisy-clip, darting back into my room to snatch one from the china bowl that held a hundred others. Dad had said that it was important for us to maintain the brand of our image – that daisy-patterned clip was my signature, he said, though I had lost a lot of love for it in the past few years.

I skidded to a halt in the hall and almost bashed into Diego again. His brown eyes washed over me. I opened my mouth to tell him that I was sorry if I had upset Mom, that I had never meant it and I waited for him to check my uniform and do the same. But he turned on his heel and stormed off downstairs, following behind Klaus.

I stood a moment longer at the top of the stairs, hurt and smarting, then ran after them.

▬

In the kitchen, there was a small stretch of wall that was not cluttered with all sorts of trinkets and we stood against it for inspections. It was the off-white colouring of the paint that emphasised the narrow opening between Klaus and Ben; the opening that had been meant for him and which he had always filled, never once missing an inspection in all the time that we had been in this house. Diego purposefully kept his eyes focused on the curtains around the window while Vanya looked at me and mouthed: _where is five_?

There was a clock overhead the cabinets and its glinting hands ticked forward violently. I tapped its anxious rhythm against the fabric of my skirt and debated skipping the inspection to search for him. I tried not to imagine the contorted, pinched face of our father upon entering the kitchen and finding that order had been disrupted. But Five was not here and that was all that mattered to me.

I nudged forward from the line and my siblings' head snapped toward me, one after the other. Vanya looked at her shoes.

"Astrid, you should be lined against the wall," Luther said.

"I want to look for Five."

Luther shook his head, looking forward at the refrigerator across from us. "That isn't your responsibility."

I held in a scoff and moved toward the door until Luther broke the line himself and stepped in front of me, his hand latching onto my shoulder to hold me in place like some kind of _warning_. He was the tallest of my brothers, even taller than Klaus. I remembered, out of the blue, the grooves that we had carved into the wooden frame of my bedroom door. We had taken the measuring-tape from the sewing-kit that our mother kept in the kitchen. We had scratched our names beside the lines and he had always been the tallest.

I looked up at him now and wondered when we had stopped that little game, like we had stopped gardening.

"Astrid, be reasonable," Luther said. "If Dad comes in here, he would see _both_ of you missing. What good would that do you? Five made his choice. Besides, he got you into enough trouble the last time, remember –…"

"Quit bossing her around, Luther," Diego interrupted suddenly.

I turned to him, surprised, but focused on Luther.

"Luther, you can move or I can _make_ you move."

Behind me, Klaus goaded, "Oh, please, do it, Astrid – _do it_! Bash his skull in, we could really do with some entertainment before breakfast."

Astral energy bloomed in my hand like a ball of translucent white light. Luther never even flinched.

"If he had planned on missing this inspection, he would have told me. He might need me," I said. "He might be in trouble – not the kind of trouble that you think Dad will give me for missing some lousy _inspection_."

"These inspections are important," Luther said. " _Presentation_ is important and our personal appearance is paramount to – …"

"God, is Dad here already?" Klaus groaned, crossing his arms. "Look, I know where Five is."

I spun around to face him. "Where?"

Klaus held his palms against the bony spikes of his elbows through his blazer. "I heard him moving around in his room last night, so I went in there to tell him that I need a _minimum_ of eight hours every night to maintain this youthful dewiness on my skin. Before I could even _try_ , he told me that he was running away."

I thought about the trinkets beneath the floorboards and wondered if he had taken it with him like we had planned. "He told you that?"

Klaus hummed, swaying. "Yup."

Diego spoke up again. "Did he tell you _where_ he was going exactly?"

Klaus dropped his arms and then tapped at his temples, his features scrunched in concentration. "I _think_ – he said – the circus. Yeah, that was it. He said something about falling deeply and madly in love with a bearded-lady and wanting to run off with her to make small little bearded-babies. And you know what? I support him."

Allison scoffed, glaring at him. "Why would you even make something up like that? Not enough attention?"

"Maybe you should _rumour_ me and find out," Klaus said. "And _attention_ , really? From you, Allison, little miss –…"

Frustrated, I made another attempt to move around Luther and his palm landed flat on my chest to push me back while he also barked at Klaus to quit bothering Allison. In his distraction, he pushed too hard and I tripped backward, falling onto my bottom and cracking my head against the kitchen-table, but there was an even heavier crushing sound in my pocket.

I forgot all about the fact that I had bitten into my lip and that it was bleeding, because I scrambled to find my pocket-watch in my left pocket, pulling it out by its chain to find its glass covering had shattered; its hands still moved but in hard jerks that never fully inched toward any other time than nine-thirty, the moment that he had broken it.

I felt like a kid because there was a sudden and harsh swell of tears behind my eyes that I choked back and the world had blurred around me, wavering in thick lines.

"Astrid, I'm so sorry –…"

I shoved Luther off and stood up myself, red-faced and spiteful. I felt so mortified and surrounded and upset about the pocket-watch that I spat, "You're the worst brother I could have asked for."

I fell into place beside Vanya, whose dark eyes watched me closely as I lifted the cuff of my sleeve to wipe my lip. The room was awkward and tense and Luther looked helplessly at the others who tried to stare at anything but him. The floorboards from the hall overhead the kitchen and forced him to slink back into line himself right before our father strode into the room and started his scraping and scraping and _scraping_.

"Astrid, what abhorrent behaviour," he scolded. "Unkempt shirt, hair-clip askew – personal appearance is paramount to this team!"

He never asked about the bloody lip; he never asked about Five. He just scraped and scraped until I felt he had hollowed me out and then it was time for bacon and eggs awash with a copper aftertaste.

▬

The dull throbbing in my head had lessened within an hour, but I still had the oddest sense that I was not in the right world, like in a muddled dream, when there comes some sudden and sharp realisation that faces should not be blank ovals without features and that words had meaning, sense, that there was reasoning behind the rustle of the grass and the heat of the sun and that I was _supposed_ to be right where I was standing.

I realised that something was really off when I left the kitchen and noticed blue portals all around the house; some light blue, sealing themselves shut, others like fresh wounds as if Five had just passed through the lobby. Then, in the upstairs hall, I glimpsed a shadowy form walk from one bedroom into another. It looked like it had _puppy-dog ears_ on its bulbous head.

I went to find Pogo to tell him that I had some kind of concussion.

▬

Crossing the garden path that led to his study, I kept my hands in my pockets to rub the broken face of my pocket-watch and I heard the dull green doors slam open ahead of me. I thought that I might find Pogo shuffling out with his cane. But it was Number Five striding across the firm grass and I opened my mouth to shout to him.

He cut the air with a shock of blue light and disappeared into its folds before his name had even died on my tongue.

Pogo shuffled through the green doors soon afterward, his cane clicking and clicking against the ground. I walked toward him instead and saw that he looked quite unsettled. Five had told him, I suspected, about his plan to time-travel and Pogo had evidently shot him down like I had expected. Rather than feel I had done something right, I felt worried and nervous because Pogo hardly noticed me until I said his name.

"Not now, Number Eight," he mumbled. "I must see your father at once."

He hobbled into the house and I remained in the garden, trying to recall the last time that he had called me Number Eight.

▬

I had spent the rest of the day alone in the disused room, playing with marbles and the deck of cards and creating small balls of astral energy to juggle between my hands. Then I remembered another thing forgotten in this house and crouched in front of the windowsill to pat around beneath its ledge for the carvings that we had put there months ago, scratched with the fountain pen that we then hid beneath the floorboards. I touched the scratches and smiled, because we had engraved the wood with the words: _five and eight_.

▬

I had dressed for bed and sank into my bed-sheets without saying goodnight to the others, not even Five.

▬

Shaken from sleep, I blinked against the pink outline of my clock which read **10.00**. There were more dark shadowy figures in my room and I thought I was dreaming like I had in the hall of weird figures prowling through the house. But then I heard more whispers and I finally shrugged off my blankets to see Klaus beside me, eyelids painted in a glittery shadow that shone in the moonlight.

"Astrid, wake up. Jeez, you sleep like the dead – no joke intended."

"Klaus? Oh, do you want to sleep beside me now instead?"

Klaus clamped his hand over my mouth and said loudly, "No, because we never do that. Guys, I think she's still dreaming."

I reached for my lamp and pulled its string, finding all my siblings stood around, shooting curious glances at Klaus. Luther pushed him aside and cleared his throat, taking a moment to look at Allison and then mumbling something that I strained to hear. Apparently, from how the others all leaned forward, nobody else had heard it either.

"What was that, buddy?"

Luther shot Klaus a withered glare. "I _said_ ," he emphasised, "that I would like to apologise to you by buying you a chocolate doughnut with extra sprinkles at Griddy's."

"Hear that? Doughnuts on Luther! I want raspberry," Klaus grinned. "Though they say a moment on the lips, forever on the hips. Isn't that right, Ben? You know what I'm talking about."

Luther shifted awkwardly. "What do you say, Astrid?"

Number Five was standing against my wardrobe with his arms crossed and I felt his eyes on me. He smiled, though it was a little weaker than normal. But he tilted his head like he wanted me to join them.

"Make it two chocolate doughnuts and we can talk," I told Luther.

He smiled and held out his hand for me to shake.

▬

Condensation fogged the windows of Griddy's diner and turned the streets outside to watercolour paintings; passing strangers with bobbing umbrellas faded into the cars that crawled past and I felt warm and snug inside the booth that I shared with my siblings, squeezed between Five and Diego. Luther had kept his word and bought two chocolate doughnuts, slapping Klaus away whenever he tried to steal a bite. He reached again and smacked into the astral shield that I placed in front of him.

Five shared a milkshake with me, oozing with fresh cream and a strawberry plopped on top. Vanya ate in quiet bites, but her cheeks were pink and she smiled more than she had in weeks – maybe even months, when I really stopped to think about it. Ben was talking about a new game that he wanted to buy and Diego was talking about some knives that he wanted too and Allison was looking at Luther like I looked at Five.

Only one other customer sat in the diner and he stood from his spot to throw change onto the countertop – what coins he got back, he shoved into the jukebox and clicked buttons randomly, not even waiting to hear what song he had chosen. But Luther perked up immediately at the tinkling sound that start off, the budding beat and lyrics that echoed around the diner. It was Allison, though, who swept from the booth and grabbed his hands to force him to his unstable feet and dance.

I followed, because I wanted to forget our fight and I was on one of those sugary highs that softened things, and I tried to pull Vanya and Five out from their seats. Five stood, but Vanya wilted back against her chair until she finally relented and tried to move her hands around.

Klaus stole our milkshake and downed it, madly thrusting his hips and shimmying. Ben scrambled out of his way but started his own little dance beside the booth. Even Diego allowed himself a small twirl and shake, swearing that he had better moves than Luther – another competition.

I was still dancing with Five and he said, "I'm sorry about earlier, when I passed you in the garden and left. I was mad that Pogo wouldn't let me – well, you know."

"I know," I said. "But we'll figure it out together, Five."

He grinned. "On our own again, like always."

Surrounded by our siblings and dancing together in the diner, I wondered if he was really right about that.

▬


	5. friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you made it to friday! hooray!!

# ☂

▬

friday

Sunlight made it through the curtains like any other morning. I slipped on the knee-high socks, the uniform, the daisy-patterned clip; _personal appearance is paramount to the team_. I was much more prepared that evening, stepping to the hall right behind Luther and Allison. Diego caught me by my shoulder and quickly smoothed out the knot at the bottom of my tie that poked through my jumper and then he bumped my cheek gently, smiling at me. By the table, my mother waited with the bell in her hand.

"Astrid, darling, we have more embroidery to do later," she reminded me.

I nodded and moved to stand beside Five, waiting behind our chairs for our father to march into the room, which he soon did with his monocle sparking and seeking us out ahead of him. He called out his usual order for us to sit though he hardly touched his own food. Five nudged me beneath the table and I glanced at him, unsure of what he wanted.

Then he stabbed his knife into the table and told our father that he wanted to time-travel, just like yesterday, when he had first told him and he had first told Pogo, too. Dad spoke of acorns and mountains; he made as much sense as he usually did.

Five left like he had done many times before.

▬

I understood that he would be upset and frustrated and I walked around the garden while I waited for him to come back. Beneath the oak-tree I found a cluster of acorns and thought it might make him smile. I stuffed an oddly-shaped acorn into my pocket beside my broken pocket-watch and walked until I reached the disused room.

I put the acorn under the loose floorboards for him to find.

▬

But then it came. Hours had passed and Vanya stuck her head into my room. "I still can't find Five," she said. "He hasn't come back, Astrid."

▬

There had to be one portal that was stronger and bluer than all the others and I sought it out all around the house, rushing between bedrooms, through rooms forgotten and abandoned like our hide-out, running through the garden with heavy and thundering fear pounding my chest, pushing me forward, forcing me to look and look until I felt blind with all the pain and panic and there was copper on my tongue again, copper crusted to my chin while I ran and ran.

The front door was ajar. I saw blue seeping through its narrow opening and relief swept through me, because I thought that I had found the newest portal outside and there it was, wobbling in mid-air, unseen by those who walked past with heads dipped down. I ran for it, unthinking, certain that if I did not push myself through it, then it would soon fade away like all the others and he would fade away with it.

The pocket-watch was left behind in the jump; my body was left behind, too.

▬

**Author's Note:**

> are you guys still here after that long note at the top i feel my audience will be a handful of skeletons because i kept you reading for so long my bad
> 
> on top of all this 'i think we're alone now' played while i was reposting this is a sign from the UA gods


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